Just happened to look up a 538 poll from 2016 today showing Johnson gettting 4.6% in Pennsylvania in the last weekend of the election. I was surprised, he ended up getting 146k votes (2.4%), far more than Trump’s margin of victory. That will not happen this year, nor will there be a Wiki release of Biden’s emails, or a Comey letter about Biden, nor will Biden forget to campaign there. And Biden does not have the high negative ratings that Hillary had. Obama won by 5% in 2012 in PA, about 300k votes (Hillary was expected to win about that many, then came Wiki and Comey). Cut that in half and that is far too many votes for the Republicans to have invalidated. If it is not our Democracy is over and this thread is pointless.
My hunch is that Republicans will succeed in getting a lot of votes tossed out; my other hunch is that the surge in the number of voters for Biden/against Trump will be too great for them to stop. I think/hope that this will play out again and again in state after state. I am still going to assume that Trump will win in most solidly red or red-leaning states like Ohio and North Carolina, but Biden is poised to bust a hole in the red wall this time in places like AZ.
A new Crystal Ball map is out this morning showing “leaning blue” or better states adding up to 290 EVs. Even subtracting 20 votes for ratfuckery in PA, Biden could win. But I’m starting to think he’s gonna get NC and Florida, too, and win it going away.
I’m intrigued by the possible of NE2 going for Biden. It went for Obama in 2008 but the Republicans redrew the district lines in 2010 to prevent a repeat in 2012. If it goes to Biden as is currently a possibility, they’re going to have to get their little pencils out again.
(Nebraska and Maine divide their electoral votes, with 1EV per winner of each district and 2EVs for the state overall winner. Nebraska’s 2nd district includes the black-heavy areas of Omaha.)
Interesting unscientific development in SW OH… the way to work sign count that goes from suburbs to steel town (tons of working class/ unskilled labor whites) to rural to lower class traditionally black neighborhoods… Biden signs now outnumbering Trump signs by an almost 2-1 ratio. The strangest thing was that there were a number of houses in the more rural stretch that had removed their Trump signs, and only had down ballot signage up. The ratios have flipped in the past week, so I am not sure if it is a Biden ground game improvement, or a weakening in support for DT since the debates and the COVID diagnosis. Either way, the key for Biden is still getting out the vote in the urban areas, and potentially the more educated class suburbs. I am cautiously optimistic.
Unscientific observation here as well, but I’m not seeing the same thing here, though I’ve seen even more Biden-Harris and down ballot signs than I was before, without an increase in Trump-Pence signs, in W Ohio.
I also went to my county early voting location yesterday and voted. The machines this year actually print out a physical paper ballot after you make your selections at a touch screen machine, which you then load into another machine (I’m assuming to count them). They also are using pens with a rubber stylus end on them so you sign your name with a “clean” pen, use it to avoid touching the machine screens, and then throw it into another box to be cleaned and re-used. For a largely Republican county, the local election board appears to be taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously.
More unscientific observations: not sure if Minnesota is still considered a swing state, but I’m currently enjoying a few days off in the northern part of the state. North of Duluth is as rural as it gets, and usually I expect to see a lot of republican political signs. While there’s certainly more up here than you see in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, I’d estimate that as you drive along route 61 Biden signs outnumber Trump signs AT LEAST 4-1. And Duluth itself was LOADED with Biden signs. We were thinking the multiple trips Trump as made to Duluth recently has made more people want to put up signs.
The law of unintended consequences strikes again. Trump messing with the mail and making it sound as if your vote may be in peril has vastly increased the number of people voting early (136 million voted in 2016).
There’s a number of states that allow or require voters to declare a party affiliation - Florida is one. It’d be a doddle to cross-reference names on ballots received to said declaration, I’m sure.
So according to 538 (caveat: doesn’t take dirty tricks into account) Biden is now more likely to win South Carolina, than Trump is to win the election, and is more likely to win Kansas than Trump is to win the popular vote.
Tangentially (or maybe not), I was looking over past election results and noticed this:
Statistically, the most misogynist states might be Ohio and Iowa. They both voted for Obama both times, then Trump by quite high margins in 2016, and are now dead even between Trump and Biden.
If the polls go much further, the core Republican voters might not bother this election as so many of them made plans to go in person. This could lead to some very nice coattail wins for Dems.
